Research in Motion, Ltd.'s (TSE:RIM) board finally came around and canned its underperforming long-time co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. They slotted Thorsten Heins as their replacement. Mr. Heins, a German native and University Hanover graduate had previously worked at Siemens AG as their chief technology officer. In 2007 he left Siemens to join RIM, first as Blackberry VP and then as chief operating officer.

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins [Image Source: RIMarkable]

Mr. Heins may be fresh out of the gates, but he already flinging some pretty controversial insults. In an interview with BlackBerry blog Crackberry, he disrespects Android, remarking, "Just take a look where the Android OEMs are. I leave this to you. Take a look at their recent announcements and what you will immediately see is there is just no room for differentiation because they are all the same."

The insult of course ignores the fact that Android devices tend to differentiate themselves hardware-wise, with different form factors, different sizes of screen, different processors, and different onboard aps. Plus it’s a pretty bold comment to be making about a platform that has marginalized yours in market share.

He also says his company is choosing to do things "the harder way". He comments, "What we choose is the harder way. I get it. Did we miss on some commitments? Yes, I admit that. That happens in high tech. This is not baking cookies."

As for his remarks on RIM's direction, he implies that the media misconstrued his comments about "staying the course". He comments, "I think this got into a little bit of the black and white zone. I was talking about drastic or seismic changes. What I was trying to address was that there was some suggestion that RIM should be split up or should even be sold. My true belief is that RIM has the strength and the assets that we can really succeed in this market."

"There is a LOT of change. There is a lot of structure change, there has been already a lot of change in terms of our software, our software platform, bringing QNX in. There is no standstill at any moment here at RIM."